Measurement of the duration of X-ray lasing pumped by an optical laser pulse of picosecond duration

• Published in: Optics communications Vol. 215; no. 4; pp. 397 - 406
• Main Authors: Abou-Ali, Y., Tallents, G.J., Edwards, M., King, R.E., Pert, G.J., Pestehe, S.J., Strati, F., Keenan, R., Lewis, C.L.S., Topping, S., Guilbaud, O., Klisnick, A., Ros, D., Clarke, R., Neely, D., Notley, M., Demir, A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 15-01-2003; Elsevier Science
• Subjects: Exact sciences and technology; Fundamental areas of phenomenology (including applications); Lasers; Optics; Physics; X- and γ-ray lasers; 52.70.L; 42.55.V; 41.50; Nickel like ion; Plasma; Pulse width; Neon like ion; Laser pumping; Silver Atomic ions; X-ray lasers; High ionized ion; Nickel Atomic ions; Experimental study; Pulsed lasers
• ISSN: 0030-4018; 1873-0310
• DOI: 10.1016/S0030-4018(02)02246-0

Measurements of the duration of X-ray lasing pumped with picosecond pulses from the VULCAN optical laser are obtained using a streak camera with 700 fs temporal resolution. Combined with a temporal smearing due to the spectrometer employed, we have measured X-ray laser pulse durations for Ni-like silver at 13.9 nm with a total time resolution of 1.1 ps. For Ni-like silver, the X-ray laser output has a steep rise followed by an approximately exponential temporal decay with measured full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) of 3.7 (±0.5) ps. For Ne-like nickel lasing at 23.1 nm, the measured duration of lasing is ≈10.7 (±1) ps (FWHM). An estimate of the duration of the X-ray laser gain has been obtained by temporally resolving spectrally integrated continuum and resonance line emission. For Ni-like silver, this time of emission is ≈22 (±2) ps (FWHM), while for Ne-like nickel we measure ≈35 (±2) ps (FWHM). Assuming that these times of emission correspond to the gain duration, we show that a simple model consistently relates the gain durations to the measured durations of X-ray lasing.